This year I decided to challenge myself to reflect on various Yoga and Buddhist aspects throughout the year. The challenges come from a variety of places including readings in Deborah Adele's Yamas and Niyamas and Thich Nhat Hanh's Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Happiness.
This week's challenge was to observe when I was being nice and when I was being real. I'm not sure what I expected out of this week, but it was interesting to see what came up for me.
One thing I've observed for quite a while is that I have a tendency to be self-deprecating in an attempt to help others feel more comfortable. That is probably the thing that came up for me the most this week in the "nice" vs "real" category. And it helped me to avoid being self-deprecating and just be there for the person. Which is neat because it also stops me from making it "all about me". But, this wasn't a big change from last week, because I had run into the same thing when I was practicing not being more or less than I am. Therefore, in this way, it felt like the same challenge.
Another thing that nice vs real brought up for me is boundaries. There is a commitment I made through the last half of 2011. I was doing it out of obligation and nothing more. I was doing it out of guilt that I didn't want to dump this commitment into someone else's lap. However, I've decided in the past few weeks that I need to do what's right and real for me, which is to get out of that commitment. As part of this week's challenge, I am officially stepping away from that obligation and leaving it in other's capable hands.
I'm not one for resolutions, but one of the things I've been working on this year is to not always need to be right. In certain longer term relationships (at the office, at home) I sometimes correct people over absolutely trivial matters. And the result is that I feel bad and it seems they do as well. However, this week when I asked "nice" or "real", it would seem I was choosing nice by keeping my mouth shut. However, my perspective is that I was also choosing real because I was valuing my relationship over my ego.
I do believe it is better to be real most of the time, but also to evaluate what real is. Sometimes my reality is skewed by perception (or perhaps that is all of the time), so I want to ensure that the reality I'm making choices based on is more of an objective one.